It took the Cahuzac affair for François Hollande to rediscover the rhetoric of his election campaign, and notably his rousing speech at Le Bourget in the north-east outskirts of Paris more than a year ago. Following Wednesday's Cabinet meeting the President of the Republic once more faced the cameras – though this time at a press conference – to announce a package of measures on financial transparency in public life and the fight against tax fraud. He vowed to be “implacable” in seeing them through.
“Last Wednesday, right here, I announced that all the lessons had to be learned from the Cahuzac affair, an affair that comes after so many years in which scandals have punctuated public life,” said the president at the outset. “Too many scandals! The latest reveals, once again, the need for an implacable fight against the abuse of money, greed and hidden finance.”
The words are so similar that they are hard to distinguish from those he used at the Le Bourget meeting in January 2012 at which he kick-started his campaign as socialist candidate to be president of the Republic. Back then Hollande had claimed that “to be president of the Republic is to be merciless with regard to corruption. And woe betide those elected representatives who succumb!” He described finance as his “adversary”, before distinguishing himself from his main rival, the incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy, by declaring: “I like people, while others are fascinated by money”.
This echo of January 2012 shows how much the Cahuzac affair had reinforced the idea, already apparent on the Left, that up to now Hollande the president of the Republic had betrayed Hollande the candidate. A section of the Socialist Party (PS) and its green allies from Europe Écologie – Les Verts (EELV) in particular had been very disappointed by the first framing of the new banking law that has just been adopted by the Parliament’s upper house the Senate. "On Wednesday the president of the Republic announced the regaining of control over finance. It was a campaign commitment that had since provoked a certain disappointment. It has no need to any more: François Hollande has retaken control,” said a delighted Pascal Canfin, one of two EELV government ministers.
The president of the Republic sought to respond to the deep crisis caused by the revelation of the Swiss bank account held by his former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac by announcing a series of reforms that will be contained in two drafts bills to be presented to Cabinet on 24th April. The first area of reform concerns transparency in public life. In particular it involves the setting up of a new dedicated independent administrative authority which will monitor the declarations of assets made by ministers, parliamentarians, Euro MPs and the elected heads of major regional bodies.
From Monday 15th April government ministers must publish their declaration of assets; four have already done so, the two green ministers plus Marie-Arlette Carlotti and Arnaud Montebourg “Transparency! It's not about flaunting, it's not about pointing the finger, it's about the French people being sure that those who govern them, those whom they have elected, those who are responsible for public funds cannot enrich themselves during the mandates that they have been entrusted with,” Hollande said on Wednesday.
Some senior political figures were reluctant to support such changes, for both worthy and less worthy reasons. They were divided between those who have major assets and fear having the finger pointed at them, those who point out that such declarations relate to the private lives of elected representatives - and their domestic arrangements - and those who consider that the declarations are of no use and that fraudsters will simply continue to lie. But the Elysée and the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault made their decision convinced, in the words of one advisor, that “without wanting to cast opprobrium or suspicion on elected representatives, we have to avoid feeding suspicion”.
One minister said his wife would refuse to declare her financial assets
The second area of the so-called “moralization shock” or clean-up – in fact the government prefers to avoid using the term 'moralization' and favours 'transparency' – concerns the fight against tax fraud. The police and justice system will get extra staff and a dedicated financial fraud prosecutions unit will be set up. The third area involves a battle against tax havens, an issue back on the international agenda after the recent 'Offshore leaks' disclosures.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
In making these announcements François Hollande hopes to scramble out of the political hole that the Cahuzac affair pushed him into. “It's what he had to do,” said one of his advisers at the end of the rapid press conference on Wednesday. It had been apparent to the government since the end of last week that Hollande's initial announcement of 'clean up' measures made the day after Cahuzac's devastating confession were, to say the least, not sufficient.
After several days of a stunned mood and even one of panic in ministerial offices, the Élysée and the prime minister's office Matignon set up a 'task force' which worked through the weekend to come up with a range of reform options. Numerous consultations took place and various reports on tax fraud, tax evasion, conflicts of interest and conduct in public life that had been produced in recent years – for example one by Transparency International, another by civil servant Jean-Marc Sauvé on conflicts of interest – were dusted down and examined.
The final decisions on what measures to include in the announcement were made at the start of the week amid tension between those who favour the “moralization shock” and some senior elected representatives who are hostile to measures which they feel contribute to feeding the idea that “everyone is rotten”. For example, the socialist president of the National Assembly Claude Bartolone led a discreet lobbying movement to stop members' assets being published, and has since publicly come out against the idea. In the end François Hollande ruled in favour of the first group, even if some suggested measures were eventually dropped.
That was the case, for example, with the suggestion that the declaration of an elected representative’s assets should be extended to their partner – one minister had already let it be known that his wife would refuse – or that the making of such declarations would be covered by the law on perjury.
In any case, given that in such reforms the devil is often in the detail, supporters of greater transparency will be examining the measures with great attention. For example, one proposal is that parliamentarians will be forbidden to practice certain professions while they are in office; supporters of the idea will want to know precisely which professions will be on that list. Similarly they will want to know what the real powers will be of the new administrative authority scrutinising parliamentarians' assets. Another key issue will be the actual form of the investigations that will be carried out into ministers' assets. “These details are very important because they determine the scope of these measures,” says someone with a good knowledge of the issue.
The desire shown by Jean-Marc Ayrault, who has been lobbying for a tough line, and François Hollande to take firm action risks running into vigorous opposition from some elected representatives. The question time session in the National Assembly on Wednesday, which took place after the reforms were announced, was a stormy affair. The opposition UMP called out “resign” on several occasions, and shouted “Augier, Augier”, a reference to François Hollande's election campaign treasurer who had made investments in a tax haven-based company. The UMP's president Jean-François Copé claimed that the measures announced by the government would “heap opprobrium on all political representatives” while allowing the executive to escape questions over the “possible responsibility of the government”.
Hollande supports under-fire finance minister Moscovici
There is also some dismay among the ranks of the Left, where the idea of a “moralization shock” has been greeted with less than unanimous approval. On Tuesday and Wednesday, for example, meetings of the socialist group of MPs at the National Assembly were stormy affairs. The president has in fact rejected some measures that had initially been envisaged, and which would have directed affected the working of the National Assembly. He chose not to make an issue over what is known as the 'Parliamentary reserve', money that is used to help fund associations and local authorities in an MP's or senator's constituency, even though it is an opaque system. Nor did he ban the practice under which MPs and senators who also have another elected office can claim capped expenses for that post as well as their Parliamentary role. “Hollande wants these measures to be passed! He didn't have a choice,” explains one advisor.
In unveiling these measures Hollande also hopes to avoid collateral damage from the Cahuzac affair. The president knows that he is directly in the firing line in the wake of two of his ministers, finance minister Pierre Moscovici and interior minister Manual Valls, being accused of not wanting or not being able to spot the lies of their government colleague Jérôme Cahuzac. Having last week ruled out talk of a government reshuffle, the president of the Republic paid a tribute on Wednesday to his finance minister, referring to “unfair attacks”.
The president also confirmed his social-democrat approach to economic issues, rejecting the views of those in his own party who believe that the Cahuzac affair also makes it necessary to change policy direction. In particular he slapped down three ministers, minister of productive recovery Arnaud Montebourg, social economy minister Benoît Hamon and green minister Cécile Duflot who is in charge of territorial equality and housing, who have called for policies to promote growth rather than more of what many see as austerity measures. “No government minister can call into question the policy that is being carried out, which is not one of austerity,” said François Hollande. “[Having] a serious budget is the condition of our credibility, it's the condition of our ability to change Europe's direction. Here, it is the serious [budget] that allows growth,” added the president.
The radical left alliance Front de gauche showed its disappointment at the refusal to alter economic policy. “Only a change of policy can restore the public's confidence,” said communist senators. In a statement they said they saw a “profound contradiction between the interests in regulating finance and the stated desire to continue policies in line with European austerity.” Another member of the Front de gauche alliance, the Parti de gauche, said that only a change of Republic – from the current Fifth Republic to a newly-constituted Sixth Republic - could bring about the “exemplary Republic” that François Hollande had promised as a candidate for the presidency.
Ignoring his critics, François Hollande continues to think that merely affirming his policy will, in time, bear fruit and that his sights are on 2017 – and the next presidential election – and not on the shorter-term. More than a year ago, at his Le Bourget speech, he warned: “The statesman must be ready for anything, in other words the worst, and always stay vigilant...I'm an optimist because of will(1)."
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1: Hollande was quoting the Italian communist leader and writer Antonio Gramsci who wrote in a letter in 1929: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."
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English version by Michael Streeter